It's an interesting spin on the subject matter, even if it doesn't have anything especially insightful to say about Norse myth as a whole. Ik heb overwogen om dit boek 5 sterren te geven, maar aan het einde was er toch een iets te grote afwijking van de originele mythe. This is a story about the characters, rather than the plot, and their importance in Loki's life, whether positively or negatively. That slipperiness makes Loki, for all the modern enjoyment of a morally grey character, hard, in the end, to actually like. One of the things that I enjoyed greatly was the way the book emphasised the complexity of the gods and goddesses when it came to gender, sexuality, race, and humanity, but also showing signs of how the gods couid be used instead to present a regressive conservatism, reflecting the way Notre mythology can be used and misused by different groups of people.

Loki also shares his experience of love in its many forms including shape-shifting into a mare to distract a stallion resulting in the birth of Odin's famous eight-legged horse, his marriages to Sigyn and Angrboda, his monstrous children by the latter, and his intense, doomed relationship with Baldr the Beautiful. If you like North mythology or just want to learn about some of the myths surrounding your favourite trickster seen in some Marvel film adaptations then definitely pick up this book. Of course, in Loki’s tale he is always the hero, a Northern Prometheus and champion of humankind, while many of the Norse pantheon are portrayed as baddies or buffoons. The stories of ancient gods and heroes seem to have a staying power that has outlasted belief in them.And constantly insulting the reader, which does nothing to keep me intrigued or wanting to continue. It super grossed me out, as did the completely unnecessary aside about Thor raping Angrboda before murdering her. The author has a weird habit of putting unnecessary “shocking” details into the old stories as we know them, and I guess the only reason for it is their shock value. Despite this, I must commend the author for their fantastic writing, making the book an enjoyable read overall.

Melvin Burgess revolutionised children’s literature with the infamous cult novels Junk and Doing It. Starting with the Norse creation myths, the trickster god Loki takes the reader on a wild ride through Norse mythology, from the era when the gods—the founders of Asgard—defeated a race of monsters, and then hurtles through legendary stories, including Odin hanging himself on the World Tree, the theft of the corrupting gold ring, and the murder of Baldr, the god of love and the sun. On the mystical side, Burgess is capable of chapters that brim with numinous light, as when Odin nails himself up on a tree to die. neither of these things are inexcusable in and of themselves however piled on top of one another while adding nothing new or unique to the narrative i found them disappointing, and reading the book a rather tedious process which was quite the opposite of what i had hoped for.If I see a physical copy in my local library I’ll probably borrow it to see if it reads better than the audiobook. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

It's this humour, coupled sections of especially powerful prose (Odin's hanging from Yggdrasil, in particular) that carry the novel through to the end. i suppose one must commend the attempt to shape the myths into something more inclusive and accepting but it simply felt unnatural, forced, and like the author was trying too hard and unconsciously ended up circling back to homophobia and transphobia once again.Also, turning the “let’s throw things at Baldr” game into an orgy of transphobic violence is absolutely nutso to me.

If there’s one good thing about the book, it’s that it makes me want to haul out my old Norse myth projects and work on them. But I’m also sorry that another piece of pop culture involving him as a main character is such a crap. Loki isn't actually originally included in a lot of the stories he's telling throughout the book, but very fitting to his character, it also makes him come off as an unreliable narrator.much to my dismay i found the writing excessively vulgar, unserious despite supposedly being geared towards more mature readers, and edgy quite simply for the sake of being edgy in a way that to me was more tiresome than entertaining, not to mention entirely unnecessary. Starting with the Norse creation myths, the trickster god Loki takes the reader on a wild ride through Norse mythology, from the era when the gods--the founders of Asgard--defeated a race of monsters, and then hurtles through legendary stories, including Odin hanging himself on the World Tree, the theft of the corrupting gold ring, and the murder of Baldr, the god of love and the sun. My Opinion: It’s not the smoothest read no, but the farther it went, the more interesting it got, with story moving forwards to the bottleneck of the end, the last point, and the last seed of doubt. Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder - Thor.